under this ruckus came a foot—one bare pink-toenailed foot with a sole black as tar. Another foot entered to match, followed by legs with turnip-looking knees. And then more: smooth thighs, cutoff jeans, a cocktail apron, a bare belly, a cropped shirt, a neck, and a mess of straight black hair. So came a girl, no more than twenty years old, slithering from the opening as if the window had birthed her.
Once through, she landed like a sack of taters, though everything else she brought in scattered like marbles. She must’ve been punch-drunk from the fall too, because without even looking up, she got on all fours to chase down her bits and bobs and shove them back into her apron pockets. She stopped only when she reached for a half-eaten candy bar lying near the toe of my shoe. Her gaze crept up my leg and eventually landed on my face. I stared back, mainly at the shiner that had swollen one of her eyes shut.
“Shit,” she croaked.
“The hell?” I said, having found my voice.
“I’ll get Nora,” Carl stammered.
She struggled to her feet. “Nonononono. Don’t do that.”
It sounded like something between a plea and an order, and it confused Carl enough that he paused.
“Go,” I said to him, exasperated. “We’re getting robbed.”
He started moving again.
“Whoa, whoa. Hold up,” she said. “I’m not robbing you. This is just a little misunderstanding. I thought the room was empty.”
“Don’t you move,” I warned her.
“Chill.” She had her hands up, her good eye on me, her chin cocked like I was the crazy one. “I’m not trying to jack anything from you guys. Promise. I’m just looking for somebody—”
“Of course you are.”
“—named Carl.”
I paused. Cupped an ear, even though I’d heard her just fine. “Say again?”
Carl, who’d made it to the doorway, stopped with his back to us and pivoted only his head.
“Carl Thomas Upton,” she said.
Without looking away from her, I crept my hand toward the emergency call button hanging around my neck. I’d forgotten about it because I spent so much time pretending I didn’t have one, though I’d make an exception for this. I was just about to press it too, when Carl shifted in my periphery, inching his walker back into the room and easing the door shut.
During the next heartbeat, I rewound the morning, trying to understand how exactly a young barmaid had landed here with Carl’s given name on her lips. For whatever morbid reason, it occurred to me that maybe Death didn’t come on a pale-ass horse, waving a scythe around. Maybe instead, he arrived like this, looking like her.
“He’s Carl Thomas Upton,” I blurted with a finger point, because ratting him out right then made a whole lot of sense.
The girl tensed. My hands turned to fists, ready for anything. We all spent some time looking at one another.
Finally, she said, “For real?”
Carl’s lips parted, and he stuttered out something. Might’ve been a yes, though if so, it was loaded with enough doubt you’d think he was lying.
“No way,” she said, just above a whisper and mostly to herself, before stepping forward, arms open to him. “I’m Josie.”
He recoiled. “Who?”
She stopped midstride, dropped her hands, and made a funny punched-in-the-gut sort of noise. “It’s me . . . Josie.”
“Josie?” Carl turned his walker around, folded down the built-in seat, and sat to look at her.
I waited for something more from either one of them. Nothing came.
“Well?” I blustered. “The hell?”
“I’m his granddaughter,” she said, like I should’ve already known this.
“Nice try.” I smiled shrewdly. “But Carl and Jenny never had any kids. Did you, Carl? Tell her.”
His eyes flickered before glazing back over. To the uninformed, he looked a tad vacant. I knew he was thinking through things, albeit a little slower than me. Josie glanced between us. Comparing, contrasting. Then she leaned in to whisper in my ear, smelling like bubble gum and hair spray and all sorts of youthful, girlish